The Noble and Ancient House of Pants · 4:55pm Aug 31st, 2016
New headcanon: The distant ancestor of Fancy Pants (one Cargo Pants) and the rest of the aforementioned Noble and Ancient House of Pants was a humble if prosperous tailor whose opening of his stores and warehouse to clothe ponies for free during a certain ancient killing winter incident - no, the other one - saved a lot of lives.
While some nobles of more exalted (or at least more warlike) ancestry may snicker about this where the Diarchy is unlikely to overhear, the ennoblement of the Pants' came as no surprise whatsoever to those paying attention to what Princess Celestia actually values.
(Edited-In Note: the Other Killing Winter Incident, in this case, was a side-effect of the disappearance of the Crystal Empire, which pulled the central core out from the thaumaturgic infrastructure that held the bitter cold of the north back behind the Crystal Mountains. And gales of snow and ice swept down near-instantly, forcing everyone in Equestria's northern belt to decamp suddenly southward or else freeze to death.
In the modern era, there are exactly two cities in that region: the returned Crystal Empire - which did not repower said infrastructure due to it being about 1,000 years behind on maintenance and the returned crystal ponies having lots of other things to fix first - and Stalliongrad, which persisted as an industrial and mining center due to (a) access to coal, (b) mighty feats of earth pony engineering, and (c) sheer undiluted stubbornness. No-one stands fast and refuses to move like a Stalliongrader who's been told that he must.)
